The nuclear deadline is upon us...well... maybe not

 

 WaPo/ABC poll: 59% support Iran deal, same percentage not confident it will prevent Iran nuke    "Maybe Barack Obama really does represent the American people best … or perhaps he’s left the electorate as confused as his administration."

. . .

 "Why make this deal at all? Michael Ramirez makes the point clearly in his editorial cartoon for Investors Business Daily:"

The French fear Obama’s destabilizing shift toward Iran over Saudis, Israelis
. . . "Fearing correctly that they had lost the faith of the American president, Israeli officials turned to France in mid-March in the effort to ensure that at least one Western nation had Jerusalem’s interests in mind while negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran." . . . 

The UK Guardian cited above reports: Israeli officials head to France in last-minute bid to block nuclear deal  . . . "France has been more hawkish than the US at the negotiating table, reportedly demanding more stringent restrictions than other western delegations."

 Obama wants to turn America against Israel  . . . " When questions first arose regarding his controversial relationship with the anti-American, anti-white, and anti-Semitic Jeremiah Wright (whom he called his “moral compass” and “political mentor”), the media were eager to dismiss allegations that he shared -- or even heard Wright express -- such beliefs."

. . . 

"The New York Times quoted Wright as predicting that if more people knew about his closeness to Barack Obama and his own views, "a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.' " 

The New Intolerance; Indiana isn’t targeting gays. Liberals are targeting religion.

WaPo

Wall Street Journal  Entire article reprinted below:

Begin quote:

"In the increasingly bitter battle between religious liberty and the liberal political agenda, religion is losing. Witness the media and political wrath raining down upon Indiana because the state dared to pass an allegedly anti-gay Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The question fair-minded Americans should ask before casting the first stone is who is really being intolerant.

"The Indiana law is a version of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) that passed 97-3 in the Senate and that Bill Clinton signed in 1993. Both the federal and Indiana laws require courts to administer a balancing test when reviewing cases that implicate the free exercise of religion.

 To wit: Individuals must show that their religious liberty has been “substantially burdened,” and the government must demonstrate its actions represent the least restrictive means to achieve a “compelling” state interest. Indiana’s law adds a provision that offers a potential religious defense in private disputes, but then four federal appellate circuits have also interpreted the federal statute to apply to private disputes. 

The federal RFRA followed the Supreme Court’s Employment Division v. Smith ruling in 1990 that abandoned its 30-year precedent of reviewing religious liberty cases under strict scrutiny. Congress responded with RFRA, which merely reasserted longstanding First Amendment protections.

In 1997 the Supreme Court limited RFRA’s scope to federal actions. So 19 states including such cultural backwaters as Connecticut, Rhode Island and Illinois followed with copy-cat legislation, and Indiana is the 20th. Courts in 11 states have extended equally vigorous protections. 

 Indiana was an outlier before the new law because neither its laws nor courts unambiguously protected religious liberty. Amish horse-drawn buggies could be required to abide by local traffic regulations. Churches could be prohibited from feeding the homeless under local sanitation codes. The state Attorney General even ruled Indiana Wesleyan University, a Christian college which hires on the basis of religion, ineligible for state workforce training grants.

 In February, 16 prominent First Amendment scholars, some of whom support same-sex marriage, backed Indiana’s legislation. “General protection for religious liberty is important precisely because it is impossible to legislate in advance for all the ways in which government might burden the free exercise of religion,” they explained.

 That hasn’t stopped the cultural great and good from claiming Indiana added the religious defense in private disputes as a way to target gays. If this is Indiana’s purpose, and there’s no evidence it is, this is unlikely to work.
The claim is that this would empower, say, florists or wedding photographers to refuse to work a gay wedding on religious grounds. But under the RFRA test, such a commercial vendor would still have to prove that his religious convictions were substantially burdened.

And he would also come up against the reality that most courts have found that the government has a compelling interest in enforcing antidiscrimination laws. In all these states for two decades, no court we’re aware of has granted such a religious accommodation to an antidiscrimination law. Restaurants and hotels that refused to host gay marriage parties would have a particularly high burden in overcoming public accommodation laws. 

In any event, such disputes are rare to nonexistent, a tribute to the increasing tolerance of American society toward gays, lesbians, the transgendered, you name it.

The paradox is that even as America has become more tolerant of gays, many activists and liberals have become ever-more intolerant of anyone who might hold more traditional cultural or religious views. Thus a CEO was run out of Mozilla after it turned out that he had donated money to a California referendum opposing same-sex marriage.

Part of the new liberal intolerance is rooted in the identity politics that dominates today’s Democratic Party. That’s the only way to explain the born-again opportunism of Hillary Clinton, who tweeted: “Sad this new Indiana law can happen in America today. We shouldn’t discriminate against ppl bc of who they love.” 

 By that standard, Mrs. Clinton discriminated against gays because she opposed gay marriage until March 2013. But now she wants to be seen as leading the new culture war against the intolerant right whose views she recently held.

The same reversal of tolerance applies to religious liberty. When RFRA passed in 1993, liberal outfits like the ACLU were joined at the hip with the Christian Coalition. But now the ACLU is denouncing Indiana’s law because it wants even the most devoutly held religious values to bow to its cultural agenda on gay marriage and abortion rights.

Liberals used to understand that RFRA, with its balancing test, was a good-faith effort to help society compromise on contentious moral disputes. That liberals are renouncing it 20 years after celebrating it says more about their new intolerance than about anyone in Indiana.
End quote.  

Indiana really needs to calm down.

 It can't be too bad because Al Sharpton doesn't like it " In the opening segment of MSNBC’s “PoliticsNation,” host and notorious tax-evader Al Sharpton compared the newly-enacted Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act to Jim Crow and slavery. “This is a key moment for the country,” he said." . . .

"I’m Only Going to Do Business in States That Support the First Amendment From Now On"

 Paula Bolyard

"This protest movement against Indiana’s Religious-Freedom Restoration Act has gotten completely out of hand. The outrage is based on lies, misinformation, and propaganda about things that are not even in the law.

"Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote in a Washington Post editorial that the new law says “individuals can cite their personal religious beliefs to refuse service to a customer or resist a state nondiscrimination law.” That’s a complete fabrication and the Washington Post allowed him to get away with it.

"You will not find one word in the law that allows someone to refuse service to a customer. All it says is that the government must show a compelling interest if it’s going to force people to violate their religious beliefs and if people believe the government has done so, they are allowed to raise religious liberty as a defense in a court case. That’s all. Not one word about gay lunch counters and no separate drinking fountains, despite the hyperbole comparing the RFRA to Jim Crow laws." . . .

 

NRO: In Defense of Indiana "The anti-RFRA backlash is a perfect storm of hysteria and legal ignorance. Indiana is experiencing its two minutes of hate.
. . .

"All the Indiana law says is that the state can’t substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion, unless there is a compelling governmental interest at stake and it is pursued by the least restrictive means. The law doesn’t mandate any particular outcome; it simply provides a test for the courts in those rare instances when a person’s exercise of religion clashes with a law."   Rich Lowry

The Rules of Racialists — Part One

Victor Davis Hanson

On a Wednesday, March 18, 2015 photo, a barista at a Seattle 
Starbucks store writes on a cup for an iced drink as she 
wears a “Race Together” sticker.

. . . "We live in such a strange world. Our government compiles exhaustive statistics on race and crime, but to cite them can be racist. Authors write, properly so, according to canons of racial propriety and careful consideration, and then newspapers print scary racist commentary that follows without worry over its repercussions. Elites of all races navigate around race and class in matters of choosing homes, schools, and entertainment, and then lecture others on their illiberal Neanderthalism for trying to poorly emulate, according to their reduced stations, the patterns of picking a home, school, or golf course embraced by a Barack Obama or Eric Holder — or Rev. Wright.

"For now we need to review the rules that racialists use and to navigate carefully around them. The stakes are quite high." . . .
. . .
"We live in a surreal age in which the two most powerful men in the United States — President Barack Obama and Attorney General Holder — can both periodically accuse others of racism and therefore themselves dip into it (“typical white person,” “cling to their…,” “punish our enemies, “nation of cowards,” “my people,” etc.).

"The president warns of stereotyping on the basis of race all the time, and therefore was free to stereotype the working class of Pennsylvania, his own grandmother, the Cambridge police, and Darren Wilson. And when we descend to Al Sharpton, tragedy becomes farce. Is there one group that Sharpton has not slurred — homosexuals, Jews, whites? And how exactly did such a lurid history of racist disparagement and petty crime earn him exemption from the IRS for chronic tax avoidance, or over 70 visits to the White House to counsel the administration on matters racial?"

 

The clash of “religious freedom” and civil rights in Indiana

Volokh Conspiracy    "Supporters of the new Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act argue that it is substantially modeled on the 20-year-old federal RFRA and on the many other state mini-RFRAs that have not been used to erode civil rights. Moreover, they note that the new Indiana law does not even mention, much less target, the group (LGBT people) most vulnerable to discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations.  Therefore, they argue, there is nothing for anyone to fear from the new law.

"The newly proposed RFRAs being considered in a number of states do in fact differ textually from the older RFRAs in ways that somewhat expand their application and that resolve disputed interpretations of the original federal RFRA in favor of more expansive readings (e.g., on the question whether RFRA can be used as a defense in private litigation).  The Indiana law does both of these, although its core provisions establishing the strict scrutiny test for substantial burdens on the exercise of religion are the same as the federal law’s." . . .

Dale Carpenter is the Distinguished University Teaching Professor and Earl R. Larson Professor of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. He teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law; the freedoms of speech, association, and religion; and sexual orientation and the law

 What will the Indiana religious freedom law really do?

The Incredible Moment Stray Dogs Paid Their Respects At The Funeral Of The Woman Who Fed Them

Buzzfeed

 

"It’s very painful to tell you that my mother has passed away. Thanks to everyone who prayed for her health. I’ll share photos of the saddest day of my life, only because something marvelous happened that I want to share. My mother was an animal lover – she couldn’t come across any without giving them a little bit of food.

"Upon arrival at her wake, out of nowhere a group of dogs came into the salon and stayed there all night as if on guard. This morning they left and couldn’t be found anywhere, but one hour before we brought my mom out the dogs came back and grouped around as if to say goodbye. 
"I swear by God that it was beautiful, marvelous."

Photos from Patricia Urrutia's post

Indiana and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act

 

NRO: Liberals against Religious Liberty in Indiana "Indiana has adopted a state-level version of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), thereby imposing a “strict scrutiny” legal standard when the state government or local powers pass laws that interfere with the free exercise of religion. For this, Governor Mike Pence and Indiana’s legislators have been denounced as gay-hating monsters, a claim that was never made about President Bill Clinton, who signed the federal RFRA, or about the people and powers of such liberal states as Connecticut, which is one of the 20 states with a RFRA. Another dozen or so states have constitutional provisions similar to those in RFRA." . . .

NRO: On “discrimination,” Jim Crow, etc.  . . . "To allege that RFRA incites rampant discrimination on the level of Jim Crow–era segregation ignores a fundamental distinction: Jim Crow segregation was state-sponsored discrimination. Regardless of what opinion a shopkeeper or a business owner had toward racial minorities, the law required him to discriminate. To give relief to a particular wedding vendor who feels uncomfortable servicing a gay wedding isn’t in any way comparable to state-sponsored discrimination." . . .

If you read only one of these articles, make it be this one:

NRO: A calm look at Indiana’s new Religious Freedom Restoration Act and its precedents.  . . . "This opinion generated an immediate backlash: How could a person be punished for exercising his sincerely held religious beliefs? In 1993, then-Representative Charles Schumer of New York introduced the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in the House of Representatives. Its counterpart bill in the Senate was co-sponsored by Senator Edward Kennedy. The bill enjoyed such wide-ranging bipartisan support that it passed the House on a voice vote, passed the Senate by a vote of 97 to 3, and was promptly signed into law by President Clinton. (Imagine such a significant law passing today with this kind of vote!)" . . .

The law states that the federal “Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” unless it “is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest” and “is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.” At a minimum, RFRA attempted to reverse the Court’s construction of the Free Exercise clause in the Smith case.

Close to crunch time; how are the Iran nuclear talks going?

 

Yeshiva World News  "Negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program entered a critical phase on Monday with differences still remaining less than two days before a deadline for the outline of an agreement. With the March 31 target fast approaching, the top diplomats from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, Germany and Iran were meeting to try . . ."

NRO: Iran’s Breakout Capacity . . . "The success of any accord, however, hinges on what “breakout” means and whether a year is enough time to detect and stop an Iranian drive to the bomb. A closer look at both questions suggests that a year is not nearly as long as it might sound." . . .

Caroline Glick: Managing Obama’s war against Israel
 . . . "As Max Boot explained Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, the administration’s animosity toward Israel is a function of Obama’s twin strategic aims, both evident since he entered office: realigning US policy in the Middle East toward Iran and away from its traditional allies Israel and the Sunni Arab states, and ending the US’s strategic alliance with Israel." . . .
"Obama has thrown caution to the winds in a last-ditch effort to convince Iranian dictator Ali Khamenei to sign a deal with him. Last month the administration published a top secret report on Israel’s nuclear installations. Last week, Obama’s director of national intelligence James Clapper published an annual terrorism threat assessment that failed to mention either Iran or Hezbollah as threats."

 

Is Iran building nukes in North Korea? . . . " Now comes word that North Korea may be harboring an Iranian nuclear bomb facility.  If true, it would make any deal with Iran an exercise in futility – which is probably why the White House isn't saying anything about it." . . .

Lt. Gen. Flynn – “Incredible Policy Confusion” While There Is A Complete Breakdown of Order in the Mid-East  . . . " The key is the verification system and CIA Director John Brennan has assured Americans that we would know what Iran is doing with their nuclear program. When asked about Brennan’s statement, Flynn responded with a question, how can we know what Iran is doing, we didn’t even know that one of our closest allies, the Saudis, were going in to bomb Yemen?' ” . . .

Obama Creates Chaos and Calls it 'Peace'  'President Obama has surrendered to Iran’s fanatical thirst for nukes, and now all of Iran’s Muslim enemies are going to war, because they understand the mullahs a lot better than Obama does." . . .

. . . "But our guy Obama has made everything worse, by siding with the two most extreme and murderous forces in the region, the mullahs of Iran on the Shi’ite side, and the Muslim Brotherhood on the Sunni side."

WaPo: What else is Iran hiding?

Bye-Bye Harry Reid

 

Judicial Watch update: Corruption Scandals Led to Harry Reid’s Abrupt “Retirement”

. . . " For nearly a decade Judicial Watch has investigated and exposed Reid’s involvement in a multitude of transgressions and JW even warned the Senate Ethics Committee, but not surprisingly, no action was ever taken. On multiple occasions the Senate minority leader appeared on JW’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” list for his role in a number of political scandals that got more serious as his seniority and clout in Congress increased."

Harry Reid, partisan brawler, gets pattycake treatment from the press . . . “Faced with Republican obstruction over Obama judiciary nominees, Harry Reid blew up the filibuster. Faced with Republican obstruction against ObamaCare, Harry Reid used the reconciliation process — a budgeting process — to pass ObamaCare. On the campaign trail, Harry Reid made stuff up, using his vantage point as Majority Leader to get media credibility. Who remembers his nonsense about Mitt Romney’s taxes?” (Reid falsely claimed he had information that Romney hadn’t paid any taxes for years.)" . . .

 

Legal Insurrection  "There have been few people as destructive to our political process and discourse as Harry Reid. His pugnacious antics have been a feature here since the inception of this blog.
"Finally, he’s retiring."

 Krauthammer: Harry Reid ‘A Disgrace’ To The Senate [VIDEO]  “ 'He failed as a partisan because nine Senators of his party lost reelection, but he succeeded in protecting the president from having to exercise the veto,” Krauthammer added. “And in order to achieve that, he killed his own institution.' ”

Claim: White House adviser Valerie Jarrett once said she seeks "to help change America to be a more Islamic country."

 Snopes

"The level of influence Jarrett holds with the Obama administration has prompted many detractors to complain she wields too much control over the President and decisions about who should have access to him, and one expression that detraction commonly takes is the assertion Jarrett is a foreign-born Islamic "mole" who is pushing for (or furthering) a Muslim agenda through the executive branch. The quote cited above is a typical example, holding that while Jarrett was an undergraduate psychology student at Stanford University in 1977, she proclaimed herself to be an Iranian who sought "to help change America to be a more Islamic country" and she felt "like it is going well in the transition of using freedom of religion in America against itself.' "
 . . .

"Valerie was born in Shiraz during the Bowmans' sojourn in Iran; she returned to the U.S. with her parents in 1962 (when she was five years old). . . We've found no evidence Valerie Jarrett is (or ever was) Muslim, her only apparent connection to that religion being the incidental one that she temporarily lived in a predominantly Muslim country with her American parents for the first few years of her life."

With that being said. . .

Valerie Jarrett was offered a role as a White House Senior Advisor at the very beginning of the Obama administration in January 2009 and now holds the position of Senior Advisor to the President of the United States. President Obama has said he consults Jarrett on every major decision, and the New Republic's Noam Scheiber reported thus of her influence with the White House:  Read more

What have those fifty million voters in 2008 and 2012 inflicted America with?

Obama's One Fine Mess of Potage
 "In the Bible, Esau sold his birthright for a mess of potage -- some red lentil soup, to be exact. Looking at the week’s events, it seems that this country has sold its glorious birthright of constitutional government by honest men and women for a mess of potage -- a false promise of hope and change delivered by a glib huckster and his shady friends. The deceit and lawlessness of Obama and those around him and the consequences have never been clearer than they were this week." . . .

 Nothing shows better the unprincipled nature of the administration and the acquiescence of the media than the stories of Bowe Bergdahl, who this week was charged with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, and Hillary Clinton’s destruction of her email server’s records. Both Obama and Clinton operate on the not unreasonable assumption that voters have memories no longer than a nanosecond and the complaisant press will be all too ready to help bury history.    More.

Max Boot: A White House That Can’t Admit a Mistake  "It is a danger in all White Houses: the longer an administration stays in office, the more detached it becomes from reality. The Obama administration is now exhibiting advanced signs of this political malady."

 But sticking with a story (stories!) that doesn’t pass the laugh test does critical damage to an administration’s credibility.  Full article.

 Jonathan S. Tobin: The Conversation About Iran Obama Wants
"Even at the 11^th hour, as we may be days away from the signing of a bad deal with Iran, it is not too late for the U.S. to step back from the brink of folly. A demonstration of strength and principle on Obama’s part, however unlikely it may seem today, would be a devastating blow to Iran and perhaps actually compel them to start making concessions that might enable the president to keep his campaign promises about the nuclear threat."

Truth Revolt

 Roger L Simon:  Obama the Crazy Pilot 
"Obama and his minions are huddled wherever they’re huddled, busy destroying the Western World with their bizarre policies and eagerness to make a deal with Iran that is so desperate it makes the word pathetic seem pathetic. The results of this desperation have been wretched, a fascistic new Persian Empire emerging from Libya to Yemen . . ."

Pro-Hassan Rouhani Iranian editor defects while covering nuclear talks in Lausanne
 . . . “The US negotiating team are mainly there to speak on Iran’s behalf with other members of the 5+1 countries and convince them of a deal,” he said.?"

Black Quill & Ink on the climate change debate

AL GORE: ‘CLIMATE CHANGE DENIERS MUST BE PUNISHED’

"The issue of global warming is one of several issues which currently divides America and yet it is one that can be so easily resolved.

"Clearly there are two camps regarding the issue of global warming. There are the enthusiasts who see the planet literally melting away and there are the deniers who see a global attempt to redistribute wealth from western democracies in the name of global warming

"There are at least two venerable and public supporters of these two positions; Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States who supports addressing global warming and an opponent of man made global warming, Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the climate contrarian Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). These two outspoken men are informed and passionate for their respective position and thus, out of respect for all Americans and in an effort to put this issue aside,they should have a widely publicized national debate."  . . .

 Climate change deniers should be punished, Al Gore has said, adding that politicians in particular should be made to pay a price for rejecting “accepted science”. He stopped short of suggesting what that punishment might be.

 The tip of the climate spending iceberg

 

"Getting a hand on Climate Crisis, Inc.’s fear and money machine is not easy – and few people understand just how enormous, interlocking and self-perpetuating it is. My article this week presents an overview that will hopefully begin opening people’s eyes. It summarizes the six strategies the alarmist industry is using to advance its agenda and protect its access to tens of billions in taxpayer and consumer dollars: climate research, renewable energy research and implementation, regulatory fiats, a new UN climate treaty, vicious attacks on anyone who contests climate chaos claims, and thought control in every venue of possible debate." . . .